


Ten Red Rings

by Defira



Series: Daughter of Ryloth [2]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Aromantic Character, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Widowed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-07
Updated: 2016-12-07
Packaged: 2018-09-07 01:54:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8778475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Defira/pseuds/Defira
Summary: Twi'leki tradition dictates that the dead shall be mourned until the ten red rings turn white again. The Alliance Commander grieves, and Arcann stands at her side. One by one, the rings turn white, and things begin to change.





	1. Chapter 1

If he was entirely honest with himself, he probably fell in love with her the moment she spared his life. When they stood together on the burning bridge of his flagship, unsteady on their feet as the Eternal Fleet bombarded their position and tried to disintegrate his vessel, and she kept trying to put her weapon down and reach for him instead. The way she cried out when he retreated into the wreckage, begging him to come with her to safety, this woman who he had spent so long consumed with the desire to destroy.

She was crying when she fled, seeking her own path to safety, and he couldn’t say whether it was from pain or exhaustion or distress, but the sight of her soot-stained face broken up by tears haunted him for months after. The only person to look at him and see someone worth something, apart from Thexan and Senya, the only person who had ever looked at him and seen someone worth _saving_.

He’d never been worth something to anyone. He knew that- even as the emperor of the entire galaxy, he’d known that he meant literally nothing to everyone he met.

Except her. A woman he had imprisoned and hunted and terrorized and traumatized beyond all reason- she saw someone worth saving. 

So he tried to be worth it. 

He didn’t remember a great deal of the next six months, sliding in and out of consciousness as he struggled to survive his injuries. Some days he could hold a conversation with his mother, who did her best to hide her distress and pretend that it wasn’t destroying her watching him flicker like a flame in a storm. It hurt, to see his mother hurting, and he wanted to do better for her. He wanted to _be_ better, to stop her from worrying. Other days disappeared in pain-filled delirium, trapped in exhausted fevers as his battered, broken body desperately tried to deal with the overwhelming damage done to it. 

He dreamed of her, over those months. He remembered every single time she reached out to him in kindness, every single moment she’d put down her weapons and tried to just talk to him. She was a bounty hunter, a hired killer, and yet she’d always looked distressed when she’d resorted to using her blasters. What kind of killer didn’t like having to kill? 

There were spots on her lekku, black swirling spots against the gentle yellow of her skin. He dreamed about those spots, of them swimming and swirling over her body like the dot from a sniper’s laser. Whenever he reached for her- to save her, like she had saved him- the spots danced onto him as well, and she recoiled from him without opening her eyes. 

He couldn’t even remember what colour her eyes were. 

The fevers and the pain and the exhaustion ate away the months, and sometimes in his more lucid moments he wondered whether she thought about him. Whether she thought him dead. Whether she’d wasted her time saving him. Wondering whether she regretted her decision to help him. 

Seeing her fight the entirety of his sister’s forces just to keep him alive on Voss upended his entire worldview anew, and possibly frightened him more than the sight of his father’s ghost stalking in her shadow. She had no reason to want to help him, she had no reason to still be fighting for him, and yet she did. She was utterly relentless- and he was a coward. 

He ran. 

It was easier to run, then turn to face the wretched mess he’d left in his wake, the lives he’d ruined and the worlds he’d devastated in his desperation to maintain control. She saw someone worth saving and he wasn’t, he wasn’t worth saving, so he needed to work out how to be that person. 

He ran. 

The mask was the first to go, and he winced at the brightness of the light on his uncovered face, his skin achingly sensitive to the point of driving him mad for the first few days. He knew that carbonite sickness often caused blindness, and hypersensitivity, and he wondered if she went through something similar when she’d been rescued from his prison. Everything escalated from there, until he found himself wondering about every little thing he did, and whether she went through something similar. If he woke in the early hours of the morning in a cold sweat, his heart racing from a nightmare, he wondered whether she slept poorly too, or whether she was blessed with calm nights. If he had days where he struggled with his meals, his stomach turning over at the mere thought of food, he wondered whether the stress of leadership got to her as well, whether she had nights where she went to bed with her stomach seething with hunger and nausea. 

The Alliance grew stronger beneath her, and if one could wade through the conspiracy theories and the sensationalist headlines that made up most of the articles on the holonet about her, he found that she seemed to be a kind and gentle woman, entirely at odds with the image of the coldly defiant warmonger he’d thought her to be originally. 

The more he learned about her, the more he found himself slipping. By the time he stood facing her on a burning boulevard outside the palace months later again, he’d accepted it already. He was in love with her. 

Not that it mattered, of course, because she was a married woman, and her husband seemed hopelessly smitten with her whenever he observed the two of them together. He couldn’t blame him, to be honest- every time she smiled at him was enough to make his chest tight, so he couldn’t imagine how besotted he’d be if he was the one lucky enough to hold her hand and sleep beside her. So he loved her, quietly and privately, and resolved to be the person she thought he could be. He owed her that much at least, his unquestioning support and his commitment to change. 

Except that the unthinkable happened. 

He saw the light and the life leave her eyes- brown eyes, she had brown eyes, dark and warm and sparkling like light caught on the surface of a pot of tea- when Torian died in front of her, and recognised the hollow shell of a person walking in her place in the weeks following. He’d been the same after Thexan’s death, focussed only on his goals and his duties in order to keep his hours full, so that he had no opportunity to be caught by the sheer tsunami of grief and guilt nipping at his heels. She offered comfort to those who needed it, and she extended her assurances to the galactic leaders terrified of the errant Eternal Fleet, and she stood tall and calm and unbending. 

But the life was gone from her eyes, and when he entered the psychic prison his father had ensnared her in, the sheer agony of her suffering was so monumental that he staggered under the weight of it. Whether she noticed or not, she did not say, and he did not draw attention to it. Scyva save him, he had no idea how she wasn't simply lying comatose on the ground, incapacitated by the strength of her pain and her guilt. When the worst was over, and he woke up dazed on the floor of the throne room, he panicked at the thought of her being trapped there, trapped in that hellscape of pain and emptiness; he crawled over to her comatose form, his heart in his throat as he dragged her onto his lap.

_Don’t be dead_ , he begged desperately, fumbling to cradle her cheek so that he could turn her up to face him. Her golden skin was cold beneath his palm, and he nearly broke. _Scyva, guide her back to the light. Please, don’t let her be dead. Let her live._

When she shivered and blinked a moment later, a gasp of pain leaving her lips as she moved again, he let out a shuddering sigh of relief, a sound almost like a laugh. Almost hysterical in the force of his panic at the prospect of having lost her. 

She blinked up at him, wincing as if in pain. “Is it done?” she rasped, shivering beneath his hand. The end of her lekku was draped over his wrist, and he could feel the way it squirmed slightly against his skin, like the dance of a lover’s fingertips. 

He realised how inappropriate his hold on her was, and he helped her to her feet. “He’s gone,” he said. 

He said nothing of the pain he’d witnessed within her, or the fear she carried without complaint. She kept her eyes closed for a long, long moment, and he helped his mother to her feet in the meantime. “I need to tell them all it’s safe,” she said, her eyes empty and painful to look upon when she opened them at last. 

“You don’t need to push yourself,” he started to say, because he couldn’t even begin to imagine what a violation it must have been to have had her own body and thoughts stolen from her, to have been mocked and attacked within the dubious sanctity of her own head. 

But she shook her head. “The galaxy needs to know,” she said, and his heart broke. She was completely his opposite in all ways, giving up her strength for others time and time again even when she had nothing left to give. Thinking of the Alliance and the stability of galactic peace when she hadn’t even had time to grieve and hadn’t had time to break even in private, and even after being psychically assaulted in the most horrifyingly intimate manner imaginable. 

She declared peace and the galaxy was calm for a time. 

She put on the ten red rings of mourning, the ritual of her people to honour her husband. She accepted his offer of friendship. 

And he hid his feelings for her deep inside of himself, well away from the surface where he might accidentally blurt them out and ruin everything. He could love her as a friend, he could support her as a friend. 

He would be the man she believed him to be.


	2. Chapter 2

She drove everyone up the wall with the rings. 

She fiddled with them constantly, her hands always moving as she sat and rolled her fingers slowly, as if stretching them, or twisted the rings around and around and around while she was lost in thought. Lana always took it to mean she wasn’t paying attention during their council sessions, or during crucial holoconferences, and would press her lips together in displeasure if she noticed her doing it. Kol’aya never seemed to notice how frustrated it made Lana, or if she did, she ignored it. 

The tapping was a bit harder to bear- if she had a nearby surface within reach, she would tap her fingers against it, the rings clacking loudly in some kind of staccato rhythm that no one could follow but her. Every time she started that again he saw Theron wince, as if it caused him physical pain to have to listen to it. Like with Lana, Kol’aya gave no indication that she noticed it upsetting Theron. 

He had to wonder whether it was a small pettiness on her part, whether she was hurt and bitter at the fact that so many of them found her grief inconvenient. But the more he watched her, the more he was convinced that she simply wasn’t aware she was doing it, like it was some kind of nervous tic that she performed subconsciously. Observing her for longer, he grew convinced of this, and more than that he was certain that the different ways in which she fidgeted were an indication of her mood. 

When she flexed her fingers repeatedly, she was frustrated, restless, wanting to do something physical instead of being bound to endless sessions of bureaucracy and diplomacy. When she twisted the rings around and around, she was worried, nervous, anxious, things she would never give voice to because she didn’t want to inconvenience anyone else. When she tapped them on things, be it nearby surfaces or against one another, she was irritated and angry, on the verge of snappish. 

When she pulled them off entirely and held them clasped tight in her palm, either one by one or altogether, she was frightened. 

He didn’t tell her that her habits became somewhat of a code for him, nor did he enlighten anyone else as to the meaning behind the different gestures. If she wanted the others to be aware of her moods, she would tell them- but the truth was, she was far more inclined to bury her feelings and pretend nothing was amiss, because she had to be the indomitable Outlander and Alliance Commander, and she had to be flawless. 

Whenever he noticed her reach a point where she started removing the rings in her fidgeting, he tried to intervene. He couldn’t run interference in her life entirely, and take away the entirety of things that caused her stress and fear, but damn it he was going to try- she was in this situation to begin with because of his family, and a great deal of it was his fault directly, so he was going to alleviate her fears wherever possible. 

This particular morning was no different. 

She was still in all white, still waiting for the first ring to fade before she could start to add colour back into her wardrobe. White wasn’t her colour, he had to say- it washed out the golden tint to her skin, and made her look almost sallow, as if she was constantly ill. When they’d first met, she’d tended towards much darker colours, and circular patterns in the fabric to match the swirling dots on her lekku. 

Now she wore plain white cotton, clothing that was baggy and unflattering in every way possible- and yet she still looked lovely. 

“I’m not interested in currying favour with the Hutts,” she was saying as he entered the Alliance command room. Lana was there, as was Aygo and Oggurobb, and not a single one of them looked comfortable. Lana’s mouth was pressed into a thin line of displeasure, her eyes expressing nothing but frustration, while Aygo had his hands on his hips as he shook his head as if in disbelief. Kol’aya was standing on the opposite side of the command holotable to the rest of them, almost as if she was standing out against an opposing force, and she glanced at him as he drew nearer. 

Her eyes were guarded, but he could feel the misery bleeding off of her. Seeing the rings in her hands only further confirmed the fact that something was bothering her immensely. 

“What’s this about the Hutts?” he asked, and Oggurobb had the good sense at least to sigh dramatically. 

“My brethren have decided the time is ripe to once more reacquire several key investment opportunities,” he began, but Kol’aya interrupted.

“The Hutts are trying to get a foothold on worlds they used to control,” she snapped, and her voice shook as she said it. “Don’t hide what it is behind diplomatic words- they want to invade or take over independent worlds so they can exploit them for wealth.”

Lana sighed wearily. “I’m not suggesting we turn a blind eye to rampant expansionism, Commander, but the truth of the matter is that we have more pressing concerns than whether or not the Hutts stage coups on Outer Rim worlds.”

“We don’t have the manpower to go head to head with the Hutts, for one thing,” Aygo said, and Arcann glanced between the four of them. Several clues clicked into place, and he looked back to Kol’aya. 

“They’re making moves towards Ryloth, aren’t they?”

She pressed a knuckle to her lips almost forcefully, blinking rapidly as she glared at the ground and didn’t answer. Her reaction was all the answer he needed. 

“We cannot be seen to show favouritism,” Aygo started to say, but Kol’aya quite literally snarled at him as she stabbed a finger across the table. 

“My people only just gained their independence for the first time in _centuries_ a mere five years ago, and now that our old slave-masters aren’t being supervised by anyone, you think I should just shrug and look the other way?”

“I’m not suggesting anything of the sort, Commander, and I’ll thank you not to put words in my mouth when it comes to the subjugation of an entire people.”

She was quite literally shaking, and going off of the energy in the room, it wasn’t going to be resolved any time soon in anything other than bloodshed, so he did the only thing he could do, and stepped between Kol’aya and her advisors. “Commander,” he said, his voice low, “let’s take a walk.”

Kol’aya flinched, as if his words had hurt her. “Of course, because I’m being too emotional to make rational decisions, aren’t I?”

The bitterness in her tone was staggering. “Not at all,” he said, keeping his voice as calm and quiet as possible. “I’m quite confident of the fact that you’ve already made up your mind, but this topic is distressing you-”

“Oh, so you think I’m _distressed_ to hear that the Hutts want to turn my home into a massive slave farm again? Is that what you think?” 

“I think you’re upset, and rightly so, and staying here arguing is not conducive to your happiness,” he said firmly. He’d spent enough years arguing with Vaylin when she got in a mood- this was nothing in comparison to her more violent turns. “Let’s go.”

He put an arm around her shoulder and began to lead her from the room, and he threw a violent glare in the direction of her advisors when Oggurobb looked like he wanted to speak up. Aygo rolled his eyes and looked disgusted, but none of them called her back. 

The doors to the elevator were scarcely closed behind them before she started crying, and his heart lurched up into his throat at the first quiet sob she let out. “Kol’aya?” he asked. 

She turned in towards him without him offering, pressing her face down against his shoulder just as she’d done out in the field so many weeks ago. “I can’t do this,” she whispered, her voice breaking as she tried to hold back the tears. 

The ride to the cantina floor was not long by any stretch of the imagination, and he didn’t want the doors to open onto a crowd watching him hold their Commander in his arms- but he couldn’t just leave her like this. He reached up awkwardly and stiltedly wrapped his arms around her, patting her gently on the back. “It’s alright, Kol’aya,” he said hesitantly.

“But it’s _not_ ,” she said, close enough that her lekku was draped over his arm. “Everyone always wants me to show favouritism when it’s for them, when it’s their pet cause or campaign, but the moment I want to do something that’s important to me?”

“Then just tell them you have no intention of changing your mind.”

“I already did. That’s what you interrupted just now.” The elevator came to a halt and she stepped away immediately, as if she didn’t want to be seen in close contact with him. He berated himself for the thought- far more likely that she didn’t want to be seen in the midst of a breakdown, or that it was improper for her to be seen acting so comfortable with someone whilst she was still in her mourning period. It shouldn’t have left a sour taste in his mouth at the prospect that she didn’t want to be seen with him. 

As the doors slid open, he followed her out into the common space with a more demure amount of space between them; he tried not to think about the fact that his shoulder was still warm where she’d pressed herself against him. “Wanting to prevent the enslavement of an entire planet and its people isn’t favouritism,” he said.

“Oh, but haven’t you heard? It interferes with commerce, and one simply can’t interfere with the galactic economy when it’s so fragile to begin with.” She said it with such poison in her voice that he was taken aback, unused to her speaking with so much passion in her.

The cantina wasn’t that busy at this hour of the morning, and he pulled her into an empty side room as they passed, ending up against the wall to remain out of sight to any passersby. “To hell with galactic commerce, and to hell with diplomacy, and Izax damn anyone who thinks otherwise,” he said in a low voice, and he reached up with his good hand to brush away the tears on her cheek. “You aren’t infallible. You aren’t required to be anything other than what you are- and you are allowed to be hurt and outraged at a threat posed to your people.”

She stared up at him, her expression miserable. She looked so lost, so broken, just like she had on the day she had performed the ritual for her husband’s spirit. She hid this part of herself away so deeply, he hadn’t even seen a hint of it again since that day. “I need to be unbiased as a leader,” she started to say, but he snorted in amusement. 

“You don’t need to be anything for anyone, except for yourself,” he said. “Be selfish, Kol’aya, especially when you know you’re in the right.”

She didn’t speak for a long moment, and the intimacy of their position was suddenly almost overwhelming- hiding out of sight of the rest of Odessen, all but pressed together against a wall while he touched her face gently. He unconsciously glanced down to her mouth when she took a breath, and then hoped she wouldn’t notice. “I didn’t think I’d ever be taking advice from a redeemed tyrant,” she said quietly. Just because it was true didn’t hurt any less, and she must have seen it in his face that she’d upset him. “Arcann-”

“It’s alright,” he said roughly, taking a step back. Putting the necessary space between them again. He was a murderer and a tyrant, and she was a grieving widow- they had nothing in common, really. “Just promise me that if you need someone with you when you go back in there, you’ll ask me.” 

She glanced down at her hands, and he only just now realised she’d let them come to rest on his chest. Her eyes widened. 

He frowned. “Kol’aya?”

“One of my rings,” she said quietly, and she fidgeted for a moment before holding up a single ring, liberated from her finger. It was stark white, with not a trace of red left on it. 

He couldn’t lie and say his chest didn’t tighten a little at the idea that she was one step closer to being free of her mourning. “Congratulations,” he said gruffly, and then paused. “Actually, I don’t know if it’s appropriate to offer congratulations for that sort of thing.”

Her lips twisted into some weird approximation of a smile. “I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing,” she said. She bowed her head for a moment, taking a deep breath before looking back up at him. “Thank you, Arcann. I’ll... I’ll let you know if I need your help later on.” 

It sounded like a dismissal, and he had enough pride left that he wasn’t going to beg for her attention. She was an important woman, and that she let him earn his keep here at all was a wonder in and of itself. “You’re welcome,” he said, and left her there without a backward glance. 

He told himself it wasn’t a cowardly thing to do.


	3. Chapter 3

At some point over the last few months, he’d taken to wearing less ostentatious clothing than he might once have been more comfortable in; gone were the exquisite Zakuulan leathers with the hand-stitched gold embroidery, and gone were the finely spun silks that had sat on his skin like water. It wasn’t like he was the sort who could blend into a crowd in the first place, given how widely known his features were to begin with, but wearing his princely finery certainly didn’t help the situation. So it was instead that, over time, he found himself more inclined to pick out unadorned greys and browns, the sort of basic clothing that he could procure from the Alliance quartermaster. 

It helped him to walk further away from his past, to set aside the trappings of his luxurious lifestyle and accept that he needed to live humbly if he was to truly help people see his desire to change as genuine. 

He tried to avoid wearing black, though- too easy to look in the mirror and see his brother’s face by accident, to catch a hint of his reflection and have to stop for a moment to deal with the agonising lurch in his stomach that came from thinking for a brief, shining moment that Thexan was still alive. There were some crimes that he would never be able to make amends for, and his brother’s death was one of them. 

But he didn’t talk about it. Not even with Senya. He’d had over six years now to bury those feelings deep, and nothing was going to dislodge them.

He hadn’t counted on Kol’aya, of course. 

She’d removed another two rings, and the white of her mourning garb was broken up with splashes of colour now. Nothing elaborate or gaudy, of course, but she liked to wear a scarf around her neck, or tied loose around her lekku, and she’d switched back to more sensible trousers. She seemed to have more of her energy back, it seemed, but she was still a remarkably reserved woman; she wasn’t inclined to spend her off hours in the cantina, or in the games of pazaak and dejarik that took place in the smuggler’s hangar. She wasn’t Force sensitive, and seemed almost uneasy at times when he met her in the enclave, as if she couldn’t help but feel badly out of place amongst these individuals who could shape reality with the power of their thoughts. She also didn’t spend time with their troops, or the officers, and he’d heard enough bad jokes in passing from soldiers who thought no one could hear them sneering at the ‘hired gun’ leading their alliance. 

His father had called her a killer for hire as well, and she had flinched at that. She was Mandalorian, though, and the Grand Champion of the Hunt- why would stating a simple fact hurt her so badly? 

“Because I wasn’t always a bounty hunter,” she said, when he asked her about it. They were sitting on the ramp of her ship, looking back across the canyon towards the base. He’d noticed that she liked to come out to her ship on the days when she struggled the most, retreating into a space that served as a physical representation for her happier memories. 

“I saw that,” he said, slowing shredding a leaf between his fingers. “It was difficult for my people to find any record of you prior to winning the Hunt.” 

She smiled almost wryly. “I am almost entirely certain they would have been looking in the wrong places,” she said. 

“Are you going to enlighten me, or are you attempting to retain some kind of feminine mystery?” 

That made her laugh. He liked making her laugh. “I was a nurse,” she said bluntly, and laughed again at the stunned look on his face. “What, the battlefield medic training never made you even suspect?” 

He looked at her with confusion. “An actual nurse? In a hospital?”

“Well, I was trained in a hospital, but I did most of my work on passenger freighters,” she said. At his curious look, she elaborated. “Not a lot of places in the galaxy willing to accept Rylothian accreditation. Folk still think we’re backwards dirt-dwellers, and saying you have training with a degree and everything gets you laughed at more often than not.” 

“And the freighters were the only ones who would hire you?” He’d never had an actual job in his life, not the sort where he needed to win the role and then depend upon the income for survival. 

“I could’ve stayed on Ryloth, stayed with my family, but I wanted to see the stars.” There was a wistfulness in her voice, and she hugged her knees to her chest, her chin resting on top of them. She carried so much sadness in her, but there was also an innocence there that took his breath away whenever he glimpsed it. “I was earning money to get into a proper Republic school, like on Corellia or Commenor, and working on freighters at least let me travel for free, and meant I didn’t have to pay for lodging.”

The unsaid side of the conversation, of course, was that nobody wanted to hire a twi’lek when it came to something as serious as healthcare, and that nobody took her training on Ryloth seriously. It made him angry in a way he couldn’t quite describe, because it was an anger he hadn’t really encountered before. Frustration at the limitations placed upon her by others, and anger at the mistreatment she’d endured in the past. Hopeless, pointless anger that he couldn’t do anything to change the way she’d been treated. “Going from nursing to bounty hunting is a pretty large shift,” he said, leaning back on his elbows. The day was pleasant, and the metal of the ramp was warm beneath him. “What changed?” 

“Ship got attacked,” she said simply. “Raiders, just looking to make an easy profit from stripping a civilian freighter.”

She said it so easily, like it wouldn’t have been terrifying to deal with when you weren’t trained for that sort of situation. “What happened?”

“They got hold of the cargo bay pretty easily, and the captain and a couple of his men locked themselves in the bridge, threw the rest of us to the lyleks, but the raiders got to engineering and overrode the command codes. Had us dead in the water, with environmental control shut down to damn near half the ship.” 

“Gods.”

She rubbed at her brow, squinting up at the sky as if searching for the details of the memory. “Most of the passengers were terrified shitless. They were just traders, civilians, that sort- nobody who could put up much of a fight against armed criminals looking to rob ‘em and then throw them out the airlock.”

“Is dealing with a hostile ship takeover a standard part of medical training, on Ryloth?” Kol’aya flinched, almost imperceptibly, but he still noticed it. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-”

“It’s alright,” she said, even though it clearly wasn’t. “There was a man on board, kept to himself, pleasant enough. Turned out he was some big shot bounty hunter himself, used to do work for the Republic and everything back in the day. Between the two of us, and this scrappy little woman from Cademimu, we managed to get most of the passengers secured down in the medbay, and since we couldn’t get the chickenshit crew to come out of the bridge, we dealt with the raiders ourselves.”

He stared at her, trying to grasp the immensity of the situation, and the ease with which she said it. “But that... you couldn’t have been more than- twenty? Twenty-one?”

She smiled, clearly amused by his bewilderment. “Twenty-three,” she said pointedly. “I did need a few years to finish my training, after all.” She reached out with her foot, poking him in the leg with her toe. “What, you telling me you weren’t the terror of Wild Space already at that age?” 

At twenty-three he’d still had Thexan by his side. His brother had been his balance, his sense of calm- it was only after his death that he’d become something worthy of being named a terror. 

Something in his expression must have given away the dark turn his thoughts had taken, because she cleared her throat pointedly. “Anyway,” she said, “apparently I impressed the old man, because he offered me a gig. Told him I wasn’t interested in killing and he just laughed, told me I’d be better at it than most because I know what I’m doing to a body.”

That was an appallingly insensitive thing to say to someone. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly, because he didn’t know what else to say. 

Kol’aya shrugged. “I lost my job on the freighter- something about damages caused, because of what we’d done to deal with the raiders, so I needed work. And it was a _lot_ of money, he was offering me.” She glanced away, her voice dropping. “There’s not a lot of jobs out there for twi’leks that let you keep your clothes on, even less when your last employer fired you, so you take what you can get.”

He didn’t know if it was the wrong question to ask or not, but he forged onwards anyway. “Did you ever get a chance to go to one of the schools you wanted?” She laughed, apparently surprised and amused. “What?”

“Do you know, no one has ever asked me that before,” she said, glancing sideways at him with a look that made something in his chest tighten. “Granted, almost nobody knows, but still.”

He flicked the shredded remains of the leaf off of his pants. “What, not even your family?”

The warmth in her expression evaporated, and he felt her withdraw. “I haven’t spoken to my family in a very long time,” she said quietly. 

_Fuck_. “I’m, uh-”

“Please don’t say you’re sorry again, Arcann,” she said, not looking at him. “You of all people should be able to acknowledge when someone has a complicated relationship with their family.”

It stung, and his pride got the better of him before he could stop himself. “There’s a difference between having a family that disapproves of how you live your life, and having a world-eating god for a father who spent your entire life torturing you.”

She stiffened, and he knew immediately he’d fucked up badly. 

“Kol’aya-”

“Arcann, you never want to talk about your family when I ask, but when I don’t ask, you bring it up constantly, usually to throw it in my face to allude to the fact that you’ve suffered in ways I can’t imagine and ergo anything I’ve gone through is insignificant in comparison.”

“I'm not! Fuck, Kol’aya-”

She climbed to her feet, brushing her hands off on her pants. “You think it’s easy for me to publicly mourn for a man I all but murdered myself, using the customs of a culture I’m alienated from? Because I know what people say about me, I’ve heard the things they’ve said.”

“What the fuck has that got to do with anything?” he snarled.

“Just that maybe I don’t understand what you’ve gone through, or what you’re still going through, but maybe it’s because you won’t tell me about it without using it to one up me. And that maybe- just maybe- I’ve got my own shit to deal with, not least of all being psychically violated by your father, but at least I’m making an effort to heal.” 

He stood up as well, fists clenched at his sides. “I’m sorry I don’t base my recovery around what’s convenient to you,” he snapped. 

She threw her hands in the air in frustration. “Okay, if that’s what you think this is about Arcann, then whatever.” Then she did something he absolutely wasn’t expecting- she pulled one of her rings from her hand and tossed it to him; he caught it instinctively and looked down. It was bone white again. 

He looked up at her in confusion, bewildered enough that it took some of the edge off of his bad mood. “What?” he asked, not sure what the rest of the question was. 

“You seem to be a common enough factor in the progression of the ritual, so I guess the goddess wants me to notice that,” she said. “So, you know- you keep helping me with my grief, you keep that and see if it helps you some as well.”

It was still warm from the heat of her hands as he turned it over between his fingers. When he looked up to snarl a response at her, she was already most of the way across the bridge, her form rapidly retreating from him. His first instinct was childish, wild anger and a furious need for attention- he could throw the ring into the field, he could throw the ring into the canyon, he could scream out his fury so that everyone would come running to see what the problem was. 

He needed to be a better man. 

With immense difficulty he closed his fist around the ring, sinking back down onto the ramp of her ship as he held the ring to his chest. 

_See if it helps you as well._

He sat and tried to work out what she meant. Tried to think about what she wanted him to see in a symbol of her dead husband, and why she thought it would help. 

The day drifted on, and the sunlight turned golden with the afternoon, and as the mild warmth of the day began to dissipate he fumbled to his feet, stumbling as stiff joints refused to cooperate to start with. His presence didn’t draw stares as he walked through the base any longer, which was nice he supposed. Either people didn’t see him as a threat any longer, or people saw him as an ally. He wasn’t sure which he prefered. 

When he knocked on her door, he half expected her not to answer. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she ignored him, after the way he’d acted- but after a moment, the door beeped and unlocked for him, and he stepped inside to find her seated at the couch, a mug in one hand and a datapad on her lap. She looked at him expectantly, not speaking. 

He took a deep breath. “I... I want to talk about Thexan,” he said at last, holding out the ring. 

Kol’aya smiled, and he knew he’d made the right choice. “Alright,” she said, climbing slowly to her feet, setting down her mug and datapad on the small table before the couch. She took his hand in both of hers, closing his fingers back around the ring. 

Her hands were warm, her skin soft. 

She smiled, and he felt like maybe it wouldn’t be so hard. “Let’s talk,” she said quietly, and she showed him inside.


	4. Chapter 4

She wanted to save everyone so badly that sometimes she forgot to save herself. 

It was something he’d been brooding over on the flight to Ryloth, somewhat as a way to puzzle out more of what made her tick, and somewhat as a way to distract himself from how friendly she was with Koth. She was down to three rings, and there was colour back in her wardrobe; she still wore a white shirt, and white leather boots, but it was becoming obvious that her mourning period was waning to a close. 

And clearly certain _other_ people were taking that as invitation to be chummy with her again, if the number of times Koth had made her laugh on this trip was anything to go by. 

_Stop being such a jealous ass_ , he told himself, pointedly removing himself from the vicinity of the bridge so that he didn’t have to hear the two of them chatting. He should have been ecstatic that someone was able to make her happy in the first place, not bitter at the fact that she appeared more comfortable in the company of someone else other than himself. It was petty and selfish and egotistical to think otherwise. 

The sound of her laughter trailed down the hallway from the bridge, and he gritted his teeth and stomped further away. 

It was common gossip that she and Koth had dallied together prior to the return of her husband, so obviously the pilot was interested. As to whether or not Kol’aya returned his interest was another thing, but their easy going camaraderie on this trip seemed to suggest it wasn’t a huge stretch of the imagination. 

_She was never going to pick you._

“It’s not a competition,” he hissed aloud, realising too late that Shan was lounging about at one of the tables in the common area as he passed through it. Theron looked up from his datapad, his booted feet comfortably settled on the tabletop.

“What’s not a competition?”

“Nothing,” he snapped, and was grateful at least that the scarring on his face made it hard for people to tell when he was blushing. 

Theron raised both eyebrows. “Okay,” he drawled, stretching the vowels out in an exaggerated manner before turning back to his datapad. “But if there’s prizes, and I wasn’t told, I’m gonna be mad.” 

Gods help him, winning Kol’aya’s affections would be the most extraordinary prize imaginable, but nothing he could possibly do would ever be enough to be worthy of her. He had so much to atone for without complicating things by yearning for her, and even then- she wasn’t a prize to be won. He wouldn’t magically unlock access to her bed or her heart just by doing a few good deeds. 

It didn’t stop him from fantasizing though, even if he felt immensely guilty for doing so. Wondering if she was as reserved in bed as she was in conversation, wondering if she needed coaxing towards letting herself go or whether she knew precisely what she wanted and took it without restraint-

 _This is not helping._

He found a nook down on one of the lower decks, a viewport looking out over the dizzying blur of hyperspace and a couch and table assembled beneath it. It was probably a communal area for crew in some of the more remote areas of the ship, but there was no one about right now, and he needed the solitude. He slumped down on the couch, closing his eyes as he tried to rein in his childish tantrum; to distract himself, he pulled the bone ring from his pocket and fidgeted with it, turning it over and over in his fingers and tracing the smoothness of the edges. 

He probably wasn’t supposed to have kept it. He had no idea what her customs required her to do with the rings once they had faded, other than to stop wearing them. But she’d given it to him as a token of her faith in him, her belief that he was capable of change, and he couldn’t just... throw it away, or give it back. He needed the tangible reminder that someone thought he was worth it, that someone believed that he could be better than the monster his father had tried to craft him into. 

And it was probably completely inappropriate that he had it, given that it was supposed to be a representation of her grief for her husband, but she’d given it to him, right? So she would know better than he would about whether it was appropriate, right?

Maybe she hadn’t assumed he’d keep it. 

He breathed out through his nose, frustrated by the circular pattern of his thoughts and the anxiety running amok in his head. 

“Credit for your thoughts?”

He started in alarm at the sound of her voice, twisting in his seat- and jumping near out of his skin when she put her hand on his shoulder as she came up behind him. Such a casual touch should not have him so worked up, but his heart was in his throat and his head was spinning, and it took a moment or two for him to swallow the panic back down again. Kol’aya, in the meantime, had come around the couch and sat down near to him, close enough that her knee brushed up against his. Her smile had faded slightly, a tiny crease between her eyes to indicate the beginning of a frown.

“Arcann?”

He smiled weakly at her. “You startled me,” he said, hoping she wouldn’t pry further than that. 

She leaned forward, arms resting on her thighs as she looked at him quizzically. “Theron said you were out of sorts earlier,” she said. “Are you okay?”

That was such a loaded question that he didn’t even know where to start. “I think we can both heartily agree that I’m never okay, Kol’aya-”

She batted him on the knee, touching him again. “That’s not what I meant, smartass,” she said, but there was affection in her tone. Sometimes he wanted to believe that she spoke to him like they truly were friends, with all the affectionate teasing that entailed. “You’re dramatic enough to be a sith sometimes.” 

She didn’t move her hand away from his knee immediately, and the heat of her palm was excruciatingly wonderful, even through his clothing. “Friends don’t call friends sith, Kol’aya.”

“Oh, do they not, Arcann? I’ll just have to call you a broody prince, then.”

“That’s hardly an improvement.”

“Pouty prince?” 

“The alliteration gives it a little something, I’ll admit.” 

The grin on her face was so breathtaking, and when her eyes crinkled and she actually _giggled_ , and his gods damned heart just about stopped in his chest at the sound. “Okay, well, pouty prince,” she said, her eyes shining with mirth. Scyva save him, she had no idea what she did to him. “What’s on your mind? Why are you hiding in the bowels of the Gravestone?”

He looked away. “I’m not hiding-”

“Nerfshit you ain’t.” She tapped him pointedly on the knee, as if trying to draw his attention back. “Are you worried about Ryloth?”

He gave her a pointed look in return. “I don’t think any of us would be here if we weren’t worried about Ryloth,” he said. 

“I mean, like, are you worried what people are gonna think of you?” she asked, propping her arm on the back of the couch and resting her head in her hand. “Because I know you’ve been anxious before about away missions, and how the public will react to you.”

Arcann smiled, shaking his head. “You know, you’re the only person who isn’t afraid to call me anxious to my face.”

“What’s there to be afraid of? And it’s pretty obvious, you’re fairly hypervigilant about your surroundings even on good days.”

It frightened him sometimes, how easily she saw through to the heart of him. “Maybe I’m worried about how you’ll cope, coming home after so long,” he said quietly, a very obvious deflection, but it did the trick. 

She shrugged, but the tightness near to her eyes gave her away. “Hey, I’m the great galactic hero improving the image of twi’leks the galaxy over,” she said. “I’m gonna be met with parades and parties and-”

“You’re frightened.”

“Fucking terrified. I threw up before I came down here.” 

On an impulse, he reached over and took her hand in his, the single ring left on that hand pressing at him as he laced his fingers through hers. Her skin was soft, and warm. “I’ll tell you a secret,” he said quietly. “I did the same the night I went back to Zakuul to face Vaylin.” 

“I don’t even know if my family are going to be there,” she said, rubbing at her forehead with her free hand, “and I don’t even know if they’ve made the connection and realised it’s me in the first place. Kriff, maybe they’re all dead, or maybe they’ve forgotten me entirely.”

He squeezed her hand. “Regardless of what happens down there,” he said, “you’re helping your people. A diplomatic visit by the Alliance Commander herself is not going to go unnoticed by the galactic community, and it’s going to put immense pressure on the Hutts to reconsider their expansionism.”

She closed her eyes, a sound somewhat like a bitter laugh passing over her lips. “It’s all a very polite way of saying ‘ _we’ve noticed you trying to be slave trading tyrants, stop it you fucking assholes_ ’.”

“Hey,” he said, waiting until she opened her eyes again to look at him. She had such beautiful eyes, so warm and so dark and deep enough that he just wanted to sink into them. “What you’re doing, for your people and for the Alliance, is nothing short of amazing. You’re an extraordinary woman, Kol’aya.”

Something flickered quickly through her eyes, something soft and vulnerable and exquisitely heartstopping, and for a moment they just stared at each other, holding hands and her knee touching his and his foot resting against hers and gods above and below, for a moment he just felt like... _maybe_. Maybe it was something he could hope for. 

She bit her lip, and it sent a jolt through him to watch. “Do you still think I’m extraordinary if I was to tell you I like to fantasize about slow roasting every goddamn Hutt over an open fire?” she asked. 

He burst out laughing. “Even more so,” he said warmly.


	5. Chapter 5

It was late in the evening when his commlink pinged, and he glanced over at it in surprise; not that many people contacted him, if ever, and certainly not in the evenings when the base was winding down for the night. He glanced at the chrono over near his bed and frowned at the time, hoping that it wasn’t too urgent whatever it was. Setting his datapad down and marking the place in the article he’d been reading, he reached for the commlink instead. 

_Can I see you in my quarters?_

He smiled faintly at Kol’aya’s message, brief and to the point as always. _I’m on my way_ , he responded, setting the commlink back down on the table as he climbed wearily to his feet. He’d spent a good part of the day training in the enclave, teaching Zakuulan fighting styles to their newest round of recruits. She’d come to watch at some point, speaking to Sana Rae in the background as he demonstrated the more complex moves. 

He liked to imagine she’d been staring, and he might have been more flamboyant with some of the attack rotations than necessary as a result. 

A man had his pride, after all. 

The base was quiet as he made his way down from the staff living quarters towards her rooms, nodding politely to those he passed. When he reached her room he found the door unlocked in preparation for him, but he still knocked out of courtesy before he entered. 

She was pacing when he entered, restless with an energy that set off something similar within him despite his weariness. She smiled curtly at him at his arrival, and gestured to the couches. “Will you sit with me?” she asked. 

“Of course,” he said, offering her a reassuring smile even though her mood was beginning to concern him. He took a seat on one of the couches, and after pacing for a moment longer she sat as well, facing across the small table from him. She didn’t speak immediately, and he cleared his throat. “Was there something I could do for you, Kol’aya?” 

She breathed out sharply through her nose, and he could see her jaw working as if she was clenching her teeth together. She didn’t move, otherwise, and his concern began to grow. 

“Kol’aya?”

She sat forward abruptly, her hands twisted together as if she was wringing them anxiously and- no. That wasn’t right. She wasn’t fidgeting at all, she was-

-taking off a ring. 

She set the ring down on the table between them, the clink of bone against glass somehow agonisingly loud in the silence of the room. It was the last one, the last of her mourning rings- she was free again. His eyes widened as he took in the immensity of the gesture, of calling him to her private rooms just to share this moment with her. He immediately berated himself for the direction his thoughts took, assuming that just because the symbolism of her mourning had come to an end, her emotional state would be at all-

“Can I be honest with you, Arcann?” she asked quietly, looking up to meet his gaze.

“Always,” he said instantly, because if nothing else he would aspire to be a friend to her, someone she could trust and someone she could turn to when things were too overwhelming. 

She breathed out slowly through her nose, as if choosing her words with care. “I think you like me,” she said bluntly, and his heart lurched into his throat in a panic. 

“I, ah- well, I can... I didn’t want to, ah-”

“You don’t have to answer that, it’s alright,” she said. “It wasn’t really a question. It just has a bearing on what I’m about to say.”

Izax forfend, she was about to tell him she found his company inappropriate, that she intended to move on with her life now that she was free once more, and that she had no intention of keeping him around. “You can tell me anything, Kol’aya,” he said, his voice slightly hoarse.

She paused for a long moment. “I want you to fuck me until I can’t remember my own name anymore,” she said at last. 

It took him a long few seconds to remember to breathe again, and even then he was lightheaded when he managed it. “I- what?” he rasped, his heart thundering in his chest and his cock already showing far too much interest in her proposal for his tastes. 

She didn’t look embarrassed, or shy, and he found that utterly thrilling. “I want you,” she said slowly, “to fuck me, over and over again, until neither of us can walk properly, and enough to know that we’ll both regret it in the coming days when we can’t even sit down without wincing.”

His fingers had dug in tight to the leather cover of the couch either side of his thighs, and he wondered absently whether his metal fingers would tear open the material if he clung too hard. He swallowed hard, his thoughts exceedingly hard to collect when he was swamped with explicit fantasies about her offer. “I don’t understand,” he said hoarsely, because he wouldn’t just lunge at her like an animal thirty seconds after her cultural rituals declared her to be a free woman. He wouldn’t. He owed her better than that. 

Her expression flickered slightly with irritation, a flush of colour in her cheeks. “What’s there to understand?” she asked curtly. “I want you, Arcann. If you aren’t interested, you can just say-”

“I don’t understand why you would choose _me_ ,” he said, almost desperately; he didn’t want to say no, Scyva save him but he wanted to say yes so badly that it almost hurt him to delay it. But he didn’t... he _wouldn’t_ hurt her. 

She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “I have spent the last year alone in my bed with nothing more than my hand and a collection of fading memories, and the longer time went on the more I found that my memories of my husband were being replaced with fantasies about you, Arcann. I am so goddamn miserable and lonely, and I’m tired of everyone looking at me like I’m some pious, untouchable saviour here to lead everyone to the promised lands. I want to be loved, and I want to be desirable, and I want to feel alive again, even if it’s just for one night, and I want...” She trailed off, licking her lips absently and drawing his gaze to her mouth. “I want _you_. But I don’t want you to say yes just because you feel like you have to or you owe me or anything, which is why I thought being upfront about it would work better.”

He stared at her, his entire body on fire. A small crease appeared between her eyes, the beginnings of a frown. 

“But you don’t have to-”

“I want to,” he said quickly. “You have no idea how badly I want to.” 

He saw the way her pupils dilated, and the quick breath she took, and by all the gods in the stars, knowing she was aroused by his words was an almost exquisite experience. “You want me?” she asked quietly, almost shyly.

He licked his lips, and she followed the movement with her eyes just like he had with her. “More than I have a right to,” he said.

“A right to?”

“I hurt you, repeatedly. And you’ve been mourning.”

Her eyes flashed almost warningly. “I hurt you as well. Almost killed you twice- and I’m more than just my husband’s widow. I’m a woman, and I’m allowed to have wants that surpass my grief.”

_Wants that surpass my grief_. Izax forfend, when she said it like that, like she was as hungry for him as he was for her, it set every nerve ending in him on fire. “My answer is yes,” he said hoarsely, not quite able to believe it was happening. 

Kol’aya climbed gracefully to her feet, and when she came to a stop before him he thought she meant to take his hand and pull him up, to lead him to the bed a few paces behind them. He was already hard, his blood thrumming in his veins and his breath coming fast and shallow; she surprised him, however, when she didn’t reach for him to pull him to his feet, but instead climbed onto the couch with him, straddling his hips as she sank down onto his lap. She was breathing heavily too, and when he put his hands on her waist she was shivering, and he felt the tip of her lekku brush over his fingers. “You’re sure?” she asked, her mouth hovering agonisingly close to his. 

His answer was to kiss her. 

She moaned and pressed into the kiss, her hips rolling down against his as her fingers pulled tight at the collar of his shirt, keeping him close; his hands slid around to her back almost immediately, wrapping around her with his palms splayed flat against her. “Good answer,” she gasped, somewhere in between their almost frenzied kisses.

He wanted to touch every single part of her, he wanted to press his skin against hers and feel every inch of her touching him, and apparently she was of the same mind as he was. After a half minute of voracious making out, she leaned back on his thighs, her chest heaving and her lips swollen as she fumbled to pull her shirt up and over her head. He didn’t help proceedings at all when he immediately started kissing as much of her as he could get his mouth on, leaving marks over her shoulders and her neck and the newly exposed swell of her breasts as she gasped and squirmed. He grunted at the way she rubbed herself back and forth on his cock, still frustratingly confined to his pants, and sucked hard at the dusky outline of her nipple through her bra in retaliation. The way she tipped her head back and whimpered was astounding. 

There was nothing gentle about what they did to one another, nothing sweet and romantic like sweethearts finally consummating their love; it was wild and hungry and almost animalistic, the desperation of two people who have held out for too long, who have seen too much together and had no outlet for their frustrations and desires for far too long. He knew that she hadn’t been with anyone for at least a year, possibly longer, and he... well, it was an embarrassingly long time, that was all he needed to admit to right now. 

When she lurched to her feet to tug off her pants, he leaned forward, his hands unable to stay still while she was so close. He helped peel them lower, and then the moment enough of her was exposed he pressed his face between her thighs, delighting in the desperate sob she let out as he ran his tongue over her. He’d never been with a twi’lek before, and while the hairless appearance of her sex wasn’t surprising, he was at least relieved to find her anatomy to be familiar enough for him to know what to do. He could taste her arousal, hot and wet beneath his mouth, and he growled possessively when she pushed him back onto the couch again. 

Her eyes were wild with a hunger that almost stunned him. “I haven’t waited this long to waste time with foreplay,” she rasped, her chest heaving. Her breasts hung heavily without clothing to support them, and he’d already left tiny marks over both, red blooms against the gold of her skin. 

“I have a duty to make you forget your name,” he said hoarsely, tugging her forward again, and she climbed back onto his lap in all of her naked glory. “I need to use every weapon in my arsenal for that.” 

“You can get clever later,” she said, fumbling with the buttons on his trousers. He groaned when she got her hands on his cock, his head falling back against the back of the couch while she nipped and kissed at his neck. She didn’t even let him get fully undressed, simply pushing his pants down far enough to free his cock, before she rather desperately sank down onto him, her moan echoing his as she took him into her body. 

She was frenzied, insatiable- he got the impression that if devouring him whole were an option, she would have taken it without a backwards glance. She rode him hard, and kissed him harder, her hands clutching at him as if determined to keep them twined as closely together as possible. He did likewise, kissing her ferociously on every part of her that he could reach, suckling hard on her breasts as she ground herself down on him. He’d fantasized about this moment for so long, alone in his bed with only his hand and his imagination, and despite the exquisite detail of his fantasies, nothing could have prepared him for her. 

He bit hard at the junction of her neck and her shoulder when he felt her squeeze herself around him, gasping as he tried to maintain control. The sounds she was making, the delightful slap of flesh on flesh as she rode him, the way her body was so hot and so tight around him... Scyva save him. 

She wailed his name when she came, her body clenching around him; he growled and joined her, near to choking with the dizzying force of his orgasm. His mouth sought out hers, and she kissed him almost desperately, as if she needed him to live, and it made his heart lurch happily at her neediness. 

Panting, sweat-soaked, he rasped “What’s your name?”

She pulled back, confusion in her eyes for a moment, her lips swollen from their kisses. Then understanding dawned on her face, and a wicked smile crept over her lips. “Kol’aya,” she murmured. 

He rolled them over onto the couch, grinning at the squeal of delight she let out as he trapped her beneath his weight. “Again, then.”

They fucked on the couch, her leg pinned up over his shoulder as he took great delight in taking his time with longer strokes, entranced by the way she writhed and arched up against him. 

He stopped to catch his breath, his pulse hammering in his veins and his thighs cramping; she lay trembling beneath him, her breasts delightfully comfortable for him to rest his head against. “What’s your name?” he asked hoarsely, when he had the strength to speak.

He felt her shiver. “Kol’aya.” 

They tried to make it to the bed, they really did, but the floor was closer and it was easier. Her thighs wrapped tight around his hips, and he kept her hands pinned above her head with his robotic hand, and they fucked desperately and gracelessly as they ground together in a trembling, sweat-soaked mess. Her eyes were wild, desperate, and she kissed him like she needed the air in his lungs. His feet were scrambling on the floor as the orgasm took him, and she sobbed out his name in a way that made him feel holy. 

Panting and dazed, it took him a few minutes to remember how to speak again. “Name?”

She moaned. “Arcann-”

“Not my name. Yours.” 

“I can’t even move.”

“Name. Now.”

“Kol’aya.”

They got to the bed- or rather, the edge of the bed. When she sat down and went to shuffle backwards, for him to climb on after her, he dropped to his knees instead; she whimpered, her hands going to his head as if she intended to push him away, but when he buried his face between her thighs she just shuddered and held him there, her fingers gentle against his scars. She was so overstimulated that she was bucking against his tongue in half a minute, her thighs tight around his ears as he suckled greedily. 

When he stood up to follow her onto the bed, licking his lips clean, she all but lunged for him, taking him into her mouth without any preamble. He groaned, wobbling dangerously on his feet, but she grabbed tight to his hips and held him in place, swallowing around him until stars danced in front of his eyes. “Kol’aya,” he moaned, as she took him over the edge with her mouth alone.

She pulled away with a wet sucking noise, licking her lips too. “Cheating,” she gasped. “Now I know my name again.”

They tasted of one another when they finally fell into the bed together, rutting together mindlessly and desperately, muscles cramping and bodies drenched in sweat. Somehow they managed to wring more pleasure from one another, near to sobbing from the sensory overload as they came to a stop in one another’s arms.

He could feel her breath, hot and fluttering against his damp shoulder. “I don’t think I can move,” she rasped, still trying to settle her breathing.

He lifted his robotic arm with some difficulty. “I could see if this has a vibrate function,” he said, and she giggled, which made him laugh in response, and then they were both giggling in exhaustion. Scyva save him, it was almost unbelievable- that he was here, and she was in his arms, and they were laughing like friends even after thoroughly wrecking one another. He didn’t think he’d ever laughed during sex before. 

She was cuddly, delightfully so, and she was absently pressing faint kisses against his shoulder as she rested against him. 

He loved her.

“I love you,” he said into the silence, steeling himself for the moment when she inevitably laughed and threw him out of her bed. How foolish of him, after all, to think that she might return his affections after everything he’d done to her.

She surprised him. “I know,” she said quietly, still pressing the small kisses to his skin. 

He waited, but she didn’t continue. He swallowed nervously, closing his eyes as he scrounged about for the courage to ask. “Do you love me?” 

Kol’aya shifted with some difficulty, leaning up onto one elbow so that she was perched over him slightly. He felt extraordinarily vulnerable, lying there scarred and broken and waiting to hear the rejection he knew was coming. “I don’t want you to go,” she whispered, her other hand rubbing soft circles in the centre of his chest. “I want you to stay, for tonight if not longer, that’s up to you. I...” She swallowed, apparently just as nervous as he was. “I don’t know if I’m good at love? If it’s... I don’t know if I do it right.”

She’d said as much to him almost a year ago, when she’d sat in a field and wept over her husband- _I don’t know if I loved him enough_. Almost hesitantly, he reached up and traced his fingers over her cheek, moving to cup her face in his palm. “You want me to stay?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“You care about me?”

“Yes. So much.”

“We’re friends?” 

“Of course,” she whispered, and gods, she looked _frightened_. Like he was going to sneer at her and stomp out of her bedroom while laughing. 

What a pair they were. 

“Then that’s love,” he said, cradling her face gently. “Or if you don’t even want to call it that, we don’t have to. Just tell me you want me to stay, and I’ll stay.”

He couldn’t be sure in the dim lighting of the bedroom, but he thought her eyes were shining as if with tears. “Please stay,” she said, the words barely more than a breath across his skin. They were hesitant, yearning, as if she’d reached this point before and met with rejection, enough to expect it again.

He leaned up enough to kiss her, and she let out the softest noise as he did, not quite sighing and not quite weeping; it broke his heart. “I’ll stay,” he murmured.

It wasn’t ‘ _I love you_ ’, but it meant the same thing. And that was good enough for him.


End file.
